Reducing Disproportional Discipline Referrals for African American Male Students at The Elementary Level

The National Center for Educational Statistics documents that most teachers in urban/city schools are White, female teachers. Differences in communication styles, culture and involvement can have a negative impact on the educational experiences of minority and male students. However, there are White, female teachers who can demonstrate the ability to engage their students that have helped to the reduce the disciplinary disparity in their schools. This study focuses on answering the overarching question, what dispositional characteristics/qualities, instructional methods, environmental parameters and classroom management techniques do White, female teachers perceive contribute to lower classroom disciplinary referrals for African American males in the elementary classroom? to answer this question, three separate interviews were conducted with each participant utilizing an established protocol, two classroom observations were conducted of each participant utilizing an observation protocol and reviewing three years of discipline data for each participant. Findings revealed students need to be actively involved in the educational process. Settings need to be structured and procedures established that allow students to demonstrate independence. Teachers need to engage parents by providing opportunities for communication through various means. There needs to be a common vocabulary that transcends cultural differences and personal bias and experiences. Lastly, teacher preparation programs need to provide students with courses that speak to the cultural and socioeconomic differences within society that are reflected in the urban/city school environment and opportunities to engage in hands-on learning opportunities within urban/city school settings with cooperative teachers

Tor Exit Nodes: Legal and Policy Considerations

Anonymity Networks The Internet is a constant companion to people the world over and as technology improves it is becoming more accessible every day. With the amount of communication that occurs online, it was only a matter of time before anonymity became an important topic of discussion. Several so-called “anonymity networks” have been developed to facilitate anonymous communication by the citizens of the web. Because the use of these networks is already so widespread, the time is ripe for a discussion of their merits and potential government responses to this phenomenon. An anonymity network “enables users to access the Web while blocking any tracking or tracing of their identity on the Internet.” Anonymity networks generally use some combination of encryption and peer-to-peer networks to allow people to use the Web anonymously. Electronic encryption functions much like the codes that have been used by governments and militaries for centuries. Put simply, one computer will translate a message into a secret code and only computers that have the key to the code will be able to decrypt it. Encryption contributes to anonymity for the obvious reason that if a message is sent over the Internet and someone intercepts it, they won’t be able to decode it unless they have the key (or a very powerful computer depending on the level of encryption). The shortcoming of encryption is that is doesn’t protect the source or the destination of the communication, only the content of the message. Peer-to-peer networks are networks like Napster. When a person would download music on Napster, they were downloading it from another user’s machine. There was no central database where all the information was stored. These networks can contribute to anonymity in the sense that there isn’t a central server that is monitoring and recording all of the traffic in the network. Anonymity networks are most effective when they are more widely used. They rely on volume of communications to cloak individual communications. A good network will also require minimal computing power and consume few network resources, as all the encryption in the world won’t do any good if it makes the network too slow to be useable. Most Common Types of Anonymity Networks Tor The Onion Relay (“Tor”) enables individuals to access sites and services available on the Internet in ways that are, at once, secure and anonymous. It does so by employing a decentralized, volunteer-run network of servers throughout the world. To use the Tor network, individuals operate through Tor clients, which cipher and decipher information and in turn make use of Tor servers, which relay information from a point of entry (or “node”), to other Tor nodes, to an exit node that delivers the user to a publicly accessible Internet location. Accordingly, when a user transmits and receives information vis-à-vis the Tor network, that information is both encrypted and encapsulated: encryption hides the user’s content, and encapsulation hides the user\u27s identity. Directed to the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techclinic/1012/thumbnail.jp

Association of sex with neurobehavioral markers of executive function in 2-year-olds at high and low likelihood of autism

IMPORTANCE: Children with autism and their siblings exhibit executive function (EF) deficits early in development, but associations between EF and biological sex or early brain alterations in this population are largely unexplored. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the interaction of sex, autism likelihood group, and structural magnetic resonance imaging alterations on EF in 2-year-old children at high familial likelihood (HL) and low familial likelihood (LL) of autism, based on having an older sibling with autism or no family history of autism in first-degree relatives. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This prospective cohort study assessed 165 toddlers at HL (n = 110) and LL (n = 55) of autism at 4 university-based research centers. Data were collected from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2013, and analyzed between August 2021 and June 2022 as part of the Infant Brain Imaging Study. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Direct assessments of EF and acquired structural magnetic resonance imaging were performed to determine frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and total cerebral brain volume. RESULTS: A total of 165 toddlers (mean [SD] age, 24.61 [0.95] months; 90 [54%] male, 137 [83%] White) at HL for autism (n = 110; 17 diagnosed with ASD) and LL for autism (n = 55) were studied. The toddlers at HL for autism scored lower than the toddlers at LL for autism on EF tests regardless of sex (mean [SE] B = -8.77 [4.21]; 95% CI, -17.09 to -0.45; η2p = 0.03). With the exclusion of toddlers with autism, no group (HL vs LL) difference in EF was found in boys (mean [SE] difference, -7.18 [4.26]; 95% CI, 1.24-15.59), but EF was lower in HL girls than LL girls (mean [SE] difference, -9.75 [4.34]; 95% CI, -18.32 to -1.18). Brain-behavior associations were examined, controlling for overall cerebral volume and developmental level. Sex differences in EF-frontal (B [SE] = 16.51 [7.43]; 95% CI, 1.36-31.67; η2p = 0.14) and EF-parietal (B [SE] = 17.68 [6.99]; 95% CI, 3.43-31.94; η2p = 0.17) associations were found in the LL group but not the HL group (EF-frontal: B [SE] = -1.36 [3.87]; 95% CI, -9.07 to 6.35; η2p = 0.00; EF-parietal: B [SE] = -2.81 [4.09]; 95% CI, -10.96 to 5.34; η2p = 0.01). Autism likelihood group differences in EF-frontal (B [SE] = -9.93 [4.88]; 95% CI, -19.73 to -0.12; η2p = 0.08) and EF-parietal (B [SE] = -15.44 [5.18]; 95% CI, -25.86 to -5.02; η2p = 0.16) associations were found in girls not boys (EF-frontal: B [SE] = 6.51 [5.88]; 95% CI, -5.26 to 18.27; η2p = 0.02; EF-parietal: B [SE] = 4.18 [5.48]; 95% CI, -6.78 to 15.15; η2p = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: This cohort study of toddlers at HL and LL of autism suggests that there is an association between sex and EF and that brain-behavior associations in EF may be altered in children at HL of autism. Furthermore, EF deficits may aggregate in families, particularly in girls

Hard Loop Approach to Anisotropic Systems

Anisotropic systems of quarks and gluons, which at least for sufficiently short space-time intervals can be treated as homogeneous and static, are considered. The gluon polarization tensor of such a system is explicitly computed within the semiclassical kinetic and Hard Loop diagrammatic theories. The equivalence of the two approaches is demonstrated. The quark self energy is computed as well, and finally, the dispersion relations of quarks and gluons in the anisotropic medium are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, revised to appear in Phys. Rev.

Locating Tune Changes and Providing a Semantic Labelling of Sets of Irish Traditional Tunes

An approach is presented which provides the tune change loactions within a set of Irish traditional turnes. Also provided are semantic labels for each part of each tune within the set. A set in Irish traditional music is a number of individual tunes played segue. Each of the tunes in the set are made up of structural segments called parts. Musical variation is a prominent characteristic of this genre. However, a certain set of notes known as set accented tones are considered impervious to musical variation. Chroma information is extracted at set accented tone locations within the music. The resulting chroma vectors are grouped to represent the parts of the music. The parts are then compared with one another to form a part similarity matrix. Unit kernels which represent the possible structures of an Irish traditional tuens are matched with the part similarity matrix to determine the tune change locations and semantic part labels

Combustion of dried animal dung as biofuel results in the generation of highly redox active fine particulates.

BACKGROUND: The burning of biomass in the developing world for heating and cooking results in high indoor particle concentrations. Long-term exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) has been associated with increased rates of acute respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer. In this study we determined the oxidative activity of combustion particles derived from the biomass fuel dung cake by examining their capacity to deplete antioxidants from a model human respiratory tract lining fluid (RTLF). For comparison, the observed oxidative activity was compared with that of particles derived from industrial and vehicular sources. RESULTS: Incubation of the dung cake particle suspensions in the RTLF for 4 h resulted in a mean loss of ascorbate of 72.1 +/- 0.7 and 89.7 +/- 2.5% at 50 and 100 microg/ml, respectively. Reduced glutathione was depleted by 49.6 +/- 4.3 and 63.5 +/- 22.4% under the same conditions. The capacity of these samples to deplete ascorbate was in excess of that observed with diesel or gasoline particles, but comparable to that seen with residual oil fly ash and considerably in excess of all three control particles in terms of glutathione depletion. Co-incubation with the metal chelator diethylenetriaminepentaacetate inhibited these losses, whilst minimal inhibition was seen with superoxide dismutase and catalase treatment. The majority of the activity observed appeared to be contained within aqueous particle extracts. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate that biomass derived particles have considerable oxidative activity, largely attributable to their transition metal content

Hard-Loop Effective Action for Anisotropic Plasmas

We generalize the hard-thermal-loop effective action of the equilibrium quark-gluon plasma to a non-equilibrium system which is space-time homogeneous but for which the parton momentum distribution is anisotropic. We show that the manifestly gauge-invariant Braaten-Pisarski form of the effective action can be straightforwardly generalized and we verify that it then generates all n-point functions following from collisionless gauge-covariant transport theory for a homogeneous anisotropic plasma. On the other hand, the Taylor-Wong form of the hard-thermal-loop effective action has a more complicated generalization to the anisotropic case. Already in the simplest case of anisotropic distribution functions, it involves an additional term that is gauge invariant by itself, but nontrivial also in the static limit.Comment: 12 pages. Version 3: typo in (15) corrected, note added discussing metric conventions use

Motor unit number estimation, isometric strength, and electromyographic measures in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Pathologic progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) results from motor neuron death, while the clinical expression also reflects the compensatory effects of collateral reinnervation consequent to lower motor neuron loss. In a cross-sectional study of ALS subjects, we made comparisons between motor unit number estimation (MUNE) values and several measures reflecting collateral reinnervation, including isometric strength, compound muscle action potential (CMAP) amplitude, surface motor unit action potential (S-MUAP) amplitude, fiber density (FD), macro-EMG potential amplitude, turns-to-amplitude (T/A) ratio, and amplitude and recruitment pattern of low threshold voluntary motor units in elbow flexor muscles. Before comparisons were made, testretest reproducibility of these measures was assessed in ALS subjects, and is highest for isometric strength, and lower but similar for EMG measures. When the effects of multiple comparisons are considered, borderline significant correlations are found between MUNE values and isometric strength. Neither MUNE values nor isometric strength are significantly correlated with macro-EMG amplitude, FD, T/A ratio, or amplitude and recruitment rate of low threshold voluntary motor units. There are significant correlations of CMAP and S-MUAP with MUNE values, but these are statistical artifacts with no independent interpretation. We conclude that collateral reinnervation prevents isometric strength and EMG measures from accurately reflecting lower motor neuron death in ALS. MUNE measurements are better suited to provide insight into the true natural history of the disease process and may be clinically useful to follow progression and response in drug trials. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50155/1/880161111_ftp.pd